Calculating machines do sums better than even the cleverest people… As arithmetic has grown easier, it has come to be less respected.

Education, which was at first made universal in order that all might be able to read and write, has been found capable of serving quite other purposes. By instilling nonsense it unifies populations and generates collective enthusiasm.

Life is nothing but a competition to be the criminal rather than the victim.

To be able to concentrate for a considerable time is essential to difficult achievement.

In regard to the past, where contemplation is not obscured by desire and the need for action, we see, more clearly than in the lives about us, the value for good and evil, of the aims men have pursued and the means they have adopted. It is good, from time to time, to view the present as already past, and to examine what elements it contains that will add to the world's store of permanent possessions, that will live and give life when we and all our generation have perished.

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Human nature is so constructed that it gives affection most readily to those who seem least to demand it.